He is fast, felicitous, pert in sparkle-pants, deftly drag queen in deliverance, vamping for the aunts and uncles, jacked up by the hoots and thunders. He is the seven-year siren delirium, madcap on the macadam of the wall-to-wall. In his circuit from den to kitchen to dining to living room he sheds and shoes himself with every loose pair of women’s footwear left on the linoleum, employs bath towel as caftan, skirt, ducal robe, monk’s vestment, burlesque chador. He brays "booty shot" as he flashes, hands you handshakes for solving rashes, mimes fist magicians who bounced off elastic fences, stretches upholstered double recliner chairs into trampolines, mimics cows on amphetamines. Moonwalking and backtalking, lithe-wired, cocky as Morocco, prince of the girls grappling with the hopped-up options of boot camp or baccalaureate, more singled-minded than an ace-of-hearts swindler, more rococo than a Rockette.

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The flair for the theatrical can survive through many generations in a family. The young man who was the inspiration for "Shorty" has a great aunt who performed her first strip tease at the age of fifty in the back room of a Mexican restaurant in San Francisco.